There are many good reasons for writing regular investor updates. The core takeaway is that you’re aiming to build relationships (sound familiar?) with stakeholders for the long term – company updates can be a great way to do that. We’re sharing these updates to the public both because of our beliefs in transparency and how that leads to the democratization of opportunity, and of course to build a relationship with you.

Quick disclaimer: these thoughts, goals, and learnings are fluid and going to quickly become out of date – but that’s the point in sharing them on a regular basis!

Look to hearing from you! Shoot me your thoughts at [email protected].

tl;dr:

We’re still exploring for the right growth channels – we took this month to invest more heavily in content marketing & social. We’re deep into the customer interview process w/ hiring managers and tech employees for B2B. We’re also exploring offering CoffeeBreak as a “white-labeled” solution for helping members connect in companies & professional organizations.

Asks?:

As we look into “white-labeling”, we’d love referrals to people who’d be interested in piloting CoffeeBreak within their company / org. Our ideal intro is someone in charge of operations / culture at a fast growing start-up or large org.

What’s new in general?:

What’s new in growth / marketing?:

As you’ve probably noticed, we’re doubling down on marketing to promote general awareness / buzz.

We’re writing a 1 piece of content / week with the following topics:

  • Our learnings: building [product update]. We’ve already written two:
  • Public company updates (like this blog!)
  • Individual CB success stories
  • “Pair” CB success stories
  • Career/individual spotlights

What’s new in product?:

We launched one major feature (rewards), added the drawer back in (so that we could fit rewards on the bottom nav), and are gearing up to do a lot of user research interviews for Tech ICs and also hiring managers.

Rewards. Our goal here is pretty straightforward in that we want to promote sharing / tracked viral growth. There’s room to play w/ customer acquisition cost (CAC) here, but we need to understand lifetime value (LTV) before adjusting too aggressively. In the future, we can also use rewards as a way to reward activity (requests sent, meetings).

User Research: Tech Professionals. We’re back on interviews w/ professionals in tech to better understand the following and how it can help motivate growth, product, and white-labeling decisions:

  • What career goals do they have? (How does this differ at career stages?)
  • What do they do currently to pursue those goals?
  • What role do relationships play in their career development?
  • Are they interested in meeting others professionally?
    • Who/why? How will it help them?
    • How do they do it today? How often?
    • What stops them from doing it today?
    • New people vs. catching up w/ people they already know?
    • In company vs. out of company?
    • If company provided a tool for it?

User Research: Tech Hiring Managers. We’re trying to understand how tech hiring managers find & evaluate talent + pros & cons of current tools / processes:

  • How do HMs determine what resources they need?
  • How do HMs source talent? What works & what doesn’t?
    • Referrals
    • Job postings / recruiters
    • In network outreach
  • At each step of the interview process (resume -> informational -> technical -> onsite), what information leads to a “yes” vs. a “no”?
  • How much control of budget do they have?

White-labeling for companies & professional organizations. We’ve consistently heard that CoffeeBreak could be useful as an internal tool – helping employees become more connected, happy, and productive. We’re diving into the details of what this should look like in conversations with tech employees and organizations. We know there’s a good amount of work we’d need to spin up the B2B offering, but also think it’s promising!

What does CoffeeBreak do again?

CoffeeBreak connects professionals for knowledge sharing and growth. Gig economy trends, automation & re-education, and increasingly flexible careers mean that relationships and how information is shared is more important than ever.